alternatively
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Bach cast a wide shadow over his musical sons. This disc from Carus reveals the ways in which his actual and compositional offspring absorbed, synthesised or otherwise engaged with his overarching influence in the years after his death. There is a lineage at work of course in these motets and part of the pleasure in this release is to appreciate just how adeptly these seven composers dealt with this profound heritage.

Johann Christoph Friedrich was Bach’s fifth son. His motet Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme was written c.1780 and is a vital, energetic setting rich in contrapuntal and imitative writing. Its second movement is especially fluid with fine lyric contrasts, and the last section is a noble peroration which freely quotes from Bach’s own setting of the same name (BWV 140). Certainly J.C.F. Bach doesn’t stint the very considerable choral demands and the motet as a whole is both an honouring of his father and a strongly personalised example of his own writing.

Kirnberger’s small motet An den Flüssen Babylons is expressive despite its brevity and the fugal drama at its apex is reached by urgent increase. Kirnberger took lessons from Bach in 1741 in composition and clavier playing and he was responsible for assembling the “Amalien” Library which was a prime repository for the nineteenth century Bach revival.

Johann Friedrich Doles studied with Bach between 1739 and 1743, and inherited Bach’s Leipzig position as Thomaskantor from 1756 to 1789. His motet here is a transitional work, one that reflects influences absorbed and new directions yet fully to be taken.  It’s shaped in a kind of bipartite way with a solo tenor plangently taking what the notes fairly dub a kind of “lied” alongside a chorale arrangement.

For all Doles’ compositionally transitional ethos it’s to C.P.E. Bach that one turns to find a more fully absorbed realisation of his father’s model. Bitten (Gott, deine Güte reicht so weit) is a brief but polished setting, not as full of amplitude as his almost exact contemporary Homilius but full of detail and with an unrivalled (among his own generation of German church composers) ear for word setting. Homilius’ own Die Elenden sollen essen is only two and half minutes in length but Carus has done a huge amount to restore this important figure to our consciousness – though not yet definitively shown to have been a student of Bach - and this small example is indicative of his ability to generate considerable contrapuntal weight in his settings.

The instrumentally based introduction to Krebs’ Enforsche mich, Gott, und erfahre mein Herz attests to the variety to be found in these diverse motets. It’s a work that flows, coils and undulates with tremendous assurance – no wonder Bach took such an interest in Krebs – and ends with a decidedly Bachian chorale.  The final work in this inspiriting collection is Altnickol’s Befiehl du deine Wege which takes Bach’s own Jesu, meine Freude as a model. The fugal writing is assured and the use of things such as choral recitative striking. It’s a wide ranging setting and caps a thoroughly successful disc, with performances evincing long understanding and stylistic acumen, and as usual very well captured in the Lukaskirche, Dresden. To further entice there are apparently two world premiere recordings – the Doles and the splendid Homilius.

Jonathan Woolf 

 

 

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